This man has a big job - stop the boats

Angus Campbell, the government's pick to head up border protection, is tall and thin, with angular features and a mild-speaking voice.

A thoroughly rounded warrior-scholar, he has commanded elite SAS forces, co-ordinated the nation's national security apparatus and earned a masters in international relations from Cambridge University.

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As the commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, his workload boils down to the well-worn phrase, ''stopping the boats''. Unpacked, that means co-ordinating resources from 16 government agencies to implement the Himalayan list of pledges made by Tony Abbott in opposition.

To name just some: turning boats back to Indonesia, expanding offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island, speeding up transfers from Christmas Island, deploying extra federal police to the region, leasing extra vessels to support maritime patrols, increasing aerial surveillance, buying boats from Indonesian fishermen and paying bounties for information on people-smugglers.

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It is nothing less than a shock-and-awe campaign on people-smuggling and comes on top of Kevin Rudd's desperate offshore processing and resettlement deal with Papua New Guinea, which has already prompted a drop in the rate of boat arrivals, which are down nearly half compared with the same period before the PNG deal.

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Abbott vowed the government would get to work on day one, declaring ''the game is up''. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has knuckled down, declining repeated interview requests and embarking on what the new government has promised would be methodical and steady governing.

Yet the many cogs of Angus Campbell's taskforce need to mesh with the regional diplomatic machinery, and that's where some oil is needed before much of his effort can begin. The lubricant will come primarily in the form of Tony Abbott's planned visit to Jakarta at the end of the month.

Jakarta has kept a wary eye on the Coalition's plans since Abbott floated his boat turnback idea, which they say is a unilateral move that threatens Indonesian sovereignty.

The pledges to pay bounties to Indonesian villagers for information and buy fishing boats that may be used to ferry asylum-seekers has compounded the sense of grievance.

Some defence sources say there is no operational reason why the Coalition couldn't order the next boat to be turned around, assuming the navy commander on the scene felt it could be done safely.

Indonesia's trenchant criticism of the idea means the government will have to tread cautiously. However slight the risk, it would be a disaster if Jakarta were to cancel Abbott's September 30 meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono out of pique over unilateralism by Canberra.

Campbell will stand at the coalface. As one navy source put it: ''Do you push [Australian] ships forward and have them sit just off the Indonesian line, turning boats back? How do you negotiate that with Jakarta? What are the legal issues?''

Defence insiders believe Campbell was the standout candidate having learnt the Canberra system from his experience working within government as deputy National Security Adviser.

''He's not political but he understands politics,'' one source said.

He will need all of that acumen to avoid becoming political, however. One decision he needs to make quickly is whether to continue informing the public when a boat arrives - a decision Morrison is leaving to him.

Border Protection Command staff were awaiting instructions this week on whether they were permitted to issue statements of boat arrivals. As of Friday, no boats had arrived since the new government was sworn in and the issue therefore had not been put to the test.

Then there will be resourcing issues. If the navy is going to carrying out the ''more forthright'' interdictions he promised this week, it will need more sailors. There is also concern about the way the then opposition went about militarising border protection for the sake of political appearances in the run-up to the election campaign.

Neil James, of the Australian Defence Association, while praising the choice of Campbell, says there is unease in defence circles about having a military commander reporting directly to the Immigration Minister for what remains a civil law enforcement function.

''If he's exercising military command, he can only report to the Minister for Defence, according to the Defence Act,'' he says.

In the meantime, the government has got straight down to reintroducing Howard-era temporary protection visas, under which refugee protection is reviewed after three years and people are denied family reunions.

It's a measure of how jumbled asylum-seeker policy became under Labor that refugee advocates who loathe temporary protection visas see some upside in the Coalition's move.

Migration agent Marion Le said that system was ''stupidity beyond belief'' and, whatever the faults of TPVs, they will at least allow people to work.

The tough policies introduced by the Howard government stopped the boats. Even opponents of Abbott's measures acknowledge they can't fail to have an effect.

But refugee advocates say we're just pushing the problem away to other countries, to other, future, Australian governments and perhaps to future Angus Campbells.

''The question is to what extent are asylum-seekers going to be pushed back into Asia or pushed on to Pacific nations and how are Australia's neighbours going to respond?'' Paul Power, of the Refugee Council of Australia, said.